Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Stone me !

JERUSALEM- Israeli doctors have removed a grapefruit-sized stone from the bladder of an Israeli woman after she left it untreated for years, possibly breaking world records.

The stone, removed in its entirety, had a diameter of 5.1 inches and weighed almost 2.2 pounds, doctors who treated the 48-year-old woman at the Western Galilee Hospital in northern Israel said.

"When I saw the stone, I was stunned," patient Moneera Khalil said in a statement released by the hospital. I could not believe such a thing was inside my body. I am happy everything ended well and that the pain is gone."

The Guinness Book of World Records lists a bladder stone weighing 0.6 pound with a diameter of 2.75 inches, taken from a man in Yemen in 1998, as the largest ever removed.

Haim Farhadian, the physician who removed Khalil's stone, said the woman had been hospitalised three years ago after suffering similar pains but had refused treatment.

Dehydration can often cause dissolved minerals in a person's urine to form masses inside their kidneys, ureters or bladder. Such "stones" causes abdominal pain by obstructing urine flow.

The stones usually do not grow beyond two inches and are often passed naturally.